


In Which Neiman Finds New Ways to Destroy Himself

by WatchMyFavesSuffer



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Antisemitism, Canon-Typical Homophobia, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Eating Disorders, Gen, Post-Canon, Slash if you squint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 11:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12480684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatchMyFavesSuffer/pseuds/WatchMyFavesSuffer
Summary: He spends almost an hour (when was the last time he spent an hour on anything that wasn't drumming?) in front of the mirror, scrutinizing the extra flesh on his arms, his stomach, and deciding that he was somehow even more worthless and disgusting than Fletcher had given him credit for.(Or, Get lit: I gave Neiman an eating disorder!)





	1. It begins on a Monday

**Author's Note:**

> So this exists because of my own experiences with anorexia, my deep and insatiable need to give my own problems to fictional characters, and the fact that Neiman is a self-destructive little shit who could conceivably have any and every maladaptive coping mechanism I wish to project on him. I hope this is even somewhat good.

It began on a Monday. Fletcher had kicked him out of rehearsal on Thursday with a slap to the face and instructions to not come back until he'd nailed "Cherokee". All weekend, Neiman had been locked in his room, angrily playing without pause and crashing into sleep for a few hours each night with his sticks still in hand.

He feels pretty good leaving for rehearsal on Monday morning. He'd gotten the charts down, and he was running early enough to stop at a dollar pizza shop and buy a slice. Neiman had pretty much been living on Skittles and Red Bull for the past four days or so (because his life skills and tastse level never advanced much past the ninth grade) and eating something with actual vegetables and shit made him feel almost like a functional adult.

He's still eating when Fletcher enters and the normal sounds of tuning instruments and shuffling charts cuts off into abrupt silence. "Look alive, assholes. 'Cherokee', bar 18, and I sure hope Neiman spent more of his weekend drumming than shoving pizza in his mouth. Two bars for free, _5,6,7-_ "

Neiman launches into Cherokee, and nails the tempo, but his hands are shaky and his hits are all off. Fletchers fist slices through the air. "Neiman, I swear to Christ Almighty if you don't learn the difference between a snare drum and your own dick, I will do things to you that will make everything else I've done so far look like a fucking high school hand job. Take it from the _and_ of 20"

Neiman makes it through the rest of practice without getting beaten to death with a clarinet, so he chalks this one up to a win.  
"Ok. I'm going to need to see brass at 7 tonight, the rest of you: learn the new chart by tomorrow. Second sax, if you don't fix your piss poor embouchure, you will be scraping the remains of your ballsack off the floor."  
Everyone files out including Neiman, who is feeling sick and somehow off-balance- which must be caused by some combination of the adrenaline Fletcher's anger always brings and the fact that he'd just eaten a real meal for the first time in about four days, and somehow feeling full has become foreign to him.

Fletcher's voice stops him at the door. "Neiman, no need to show up tomorrow, there's no way you'll get those charts in shape by the Central Park show."

"But I was fine today." He says, tight-lipped.

"Since when does _fine_ make you a core in my band, and since when was _fine_ playing like a retard with dicks for hands?"

"What, you want the alternate on those charts? That-that fuckin asshole?"  
"The alternate" was a pleasant-enough white dude who's name Neiman hadn't bothered to learn, who was just another in a long string of Ryan Connollys. "You know he's a fucking joke compared to me."

Neiman's treading close to the line here and he knows it. This is not the protocol- Andrew is supposed to grit his teeth and take it like a champ. Andrew is supposed to agonize over slight variations in tempo until Fletcher deems him worthy of being core again. He is never supposed to hint at how much he might mean to Fletcher, admit that he knows all the secret ways they are tangled up and hidden inside each other.  
"Neiman, maybe if you spent less time eating pizza and going to see movies with _daddy_ , maybe you'd be able to play slightly better. Maybe. But for now, get your fat ass out of my practice room."

Neiman instinctively looks down at his stomach, cheeks burning red, suddenly and acutely conscious of his body's physical presence.

Fletcher pounces on the momentary glance. "Jesus, Neiman, are you a 13 year old girl? Did I hurt your feelings by telling you _those jeans make you look fat_? Grow up."

Neiman rushes out the door, and back to his apartment. He finds himself standing naked in front of the full length mirror that hangs on his door.

Fletcher had called Neiman a lot of things: a worthless sack of shit, a stupid kike, a pathetic faggot loser, but never fat. It didn't _really_ bother him, though. Of course not.

He is thinking about that first rehearsal. He thought about that day often, if only because the pain of the memory was too sharp and exquisite to waste.

_"Say it"  
"I'm here for a reason"_

He'd fallen, trusting and wide-eyed, into the lull Fletcher's praise, believing that maybe he was the next fucking Buddy Rich. How had he been so naïve, so stupid? How could he have let hismelf believe that he was _special_ and worth something? He looks back on that younger Andrew with disgust and disbelief. How could the scabbed and calloused and wary creature in front of the mirror be the same kid who'd said the words _I'm here for a reason_ and meant them?

In his reflection, he still sees hints of that dumb, lazy kid. His soft, white stomach glares back at him. Soft meant content. Soft meant undisciplined. He conjures up Fletcher's words: _get your fat ass out of my practice room_. The words rang horrible and true. He grimaces at his reflection. _Fat_.

He spends almost an hour (when was the last time he spent an hour on _anything_ that wasn't drumming?) in front of the mirror, scrutinizing the extra flesh on his arms, his stomach, and deciding that he was somehow even more worthless and disgusting than Fletcher had given him credit for. Riding the wave of adrenaline and self-hatred, Andrew throws out all the food in his fridge.

 _Why do I care? I shouldn't care. I'm not a teenage girl, I'm a grown man and a fucking artist. Why do I_ care _?_ he thinks endlessly, but that doesn't make him feel less like he wants to tear his own skin off. He stops sleeping. He buys sugar-free energy drinks and pounds them down to keep him awake and alert enough to play. He plays nonstop six days of the week, running on fumes and the occasional apple picked up from the farmer's market by Columbia. On Mondays, he visits his father, eats popcorn and leaves the second the credits roll to go practice again.

The show in Central Park comes and goes. (No call from Fletcher, so he guesses the alternate couldn't have screwed up that badly. The thought that this nobody could actually replace him nags him, a scab demanding to be picked, but it is soon crowded out by gnawing hunger pangs. This, he decides, is the best part of starvation.) He feels barely alive, fuzzy and vague, his vision going black every time he stands up. Below his eyes and his fingernails go bruise-purple.

Energy drinks aren't keeping him functional anymore, so he starts buying Adderall from a vocal major he used to know from Schaffer. He learns that there is a delightful variety of ways to get high. Mondays, which used to mean popcorn and old movies, soon get surrendered to downers, sleep and _Birdland_ , eating carrot sticks and melting into his mattress with the warm ecstasy of the drugs and the rare sensation of eating solid food.

By the time he is told to come back to practices, he's memorized half the jazz classics in the ensemble's repertoire and none of his jeans fit him anymore. He bores new holes in his belt with a box cutter. He sets up his mirror facing his kit and spends long hours practicing shirtless, bleeding and sweating and swearing.

He actually survives his first rehearsal back without being eviscerated- courtesy of an Oxy the night before so he could sleep, and Adderall and an apple for breakfast that morning. He is a model protégé, punctual and precise and unbreakable.

The weeks wear on; a music festival in Philadelphia. His dad invites him to dinner to celebrate. Neiman's palms sweat the entire train ride; the thoughts of knife and fork, chewing and swallowing, small talk and dinner and dad all suffocating him.

His father looks at him strangely, asks him if he's been eating okay. Neiman nearly chokes on fucked-up laughter. He pushes some pasta around his plate, chews on a tasteless side salad and asks the waiter to refill his water every five minutes. At the end of the night, Andrew's father hugs him like he might break, and he can feel his father's palm skimming over his back, feeling for the protruding spikes of shoulderblade and vertebrae. The whole thing makes him sick to his stomach. This display of concern somehow makes him want to eat even less. Before they leave, he asks his dad for money so he can buy clothes that actually fit.

Months have gone by, and he's cold all the time and feels like he's rotting from the inside, but its okay, because Fletcher has no complaints. Andrew's been perfect in self-correction, docile in response to abuse, barely there- nothing to object to, no voices raised, nothing in excess. He is perfectly restrained and barely human.

Yet, no matter how hard he tries, he still can't seem to shed his softness, his imperfections, these constant reminders that he needs more than he deserves, more than he is allowed. He doesn't deserve food, doesn't deserve to be rosy-cheeked and happy and _full_. Not him, the fuckup who couldn't get his mother to stay, who gets laughed at by his idiot, Division-Three-quarterback cousins, who isn't worth Fletcher's time. He's sure that the more ropes of muscle and vein show through, the closer he'll be, but somehow he never gets there. His bones are nearly all visible when he becomes convinced that it never goes away- he'll always be the useless fat kid no matter how fast he drums or how different he looks.  
But he can't go backward, can't be a real human again, so he plunges forward. He is terrified all the time that his body, its declaration that he is merely human, has marked him forever as ordinary.

Right after a concert, he almost passes out. The world suddenly tilts and slips away, and he's on the floor of his hallway, seeing stars. Terrified, wild and starving, he find himself with his phone in his hand, having apparently just hung up with his local Chinese place. Like half the fucking menu arrives and he eats most of it before he even fully realizes what's happening. That's when he looks up how to make himself throw up.

The new habit gives him scabs on his knuckles and a spot at the back of his throat that is always bloody and raw. Add that to the list of ways in which the person once known as Andrew Neiman was now just a broken machine.

 


	2. It all goes to hell

The day it all goes to hell he'd been successfully fasting all week (ok, he'd puked up some donuts two days before) and was shivering despite a fleece-lined sweatshirt. He is gloriously dizzy, so far zoned out that Fletcher's voice couldn't even raise his heart rate anymore.  
He fucks up almost immediately, the piano player glaring at him as the tempo lags. Fletcher throws a chair at his head, which is business as usual, except when Neiman ducks, everything goes black.   
  
He wakes up on the floor, where pretty much the whole band hovers over him. His eyes can't stay open for more than a moment, so he has to guess who's there by their voices. He's pretty sure it's first trumpet who says "I think the chair hit him."  
  
"You fucking idiot, don't you think there would be a mark on his head?" Fletcher, unmistakably.  
  
"He just ducked too fast," someone says.  
  
"You think it's drugs?" whispers a voice Neiman doesn't recognize. Upright bass maybe? (Nothing like not recognizing the people you spend most of your life with to realize just how antisocial you are.)  
  
"I'm calling the cops,"  
  
"Like fuck you are. Everybody out, I'll deal with Neiman." Fletcher snaps.   
  
Andrew is still unable to hear or see too clearly as everyone files out, muttering among themselves.  
  
"Neiman, you have one chance to get up before I stop being my usual delightful self."   
  
Fletcher's voice is enough to force his eyes to open, but he doubts his ability to sit up just yet. Fletcher solves that concern by hauling Andrew up by his arms. Andrew floats up, limp and light as a ragdoll.   
  
"I swear to God, if you're _high_ in my rehearsal, you fucking Charlie Parker wannabe-"  
  
"Jesus! I'm not high. Just ducked too fast. Ever consider it might be _your_ fault for throwing a chair at me?"  
  
"Don't be a little bitch, Neiman. I've thrown plenty of shit at you, and you've never _blacked out_. What are you using? I'll beat the shit out of every small-time speed dealer in town before I have you sabotage my band."  
  
Neiman's head is throbbing, a low steady bass. He raises a hand to his forehead, and his sweatshirt sleeve slips down his arm.

His bones push through his skin, obscene.

He quickly pushes his sleeve back into place, but Fletcher had seen. He'd seen, and now he knew and now Neiman was thoroughly, totally fucked.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a short one, but more is upcoming!


	3. In Which Neiman is Totally Fucked

"Neiman," Fletcher begins slowly. "At the risk of playing into your pathetic pillow biter fantasies, I'm going to politely ask you to remove your shirt."   
  
"What the fu-- no! Fuck you."  
  
"We both know this will be more pleasant if you take it off voluntarily."  
  
Neiman begrudgingly stands. He peels off his sweatshirt.  
  
Fletcher makes a small motion with his hand as if to say _and_?  
  
Andrew grits his teeth and removes the baggy white v-neck underneath, gone rusty with bloodstains that didn't come out in the wash.  
  
Andrew looks like a walking fucking corpse. His hipbones sneak, razor-sharp, over the waistband of his jeans. His ribs gouge through his skin, gaping hollows between each bone. His clavicle is visible all the way to where it connects to the prongs of his shoulder bones. His upper arms are smaller than his elbows. Significantly smaller.  
  
Fletcher didn't gasp-- of course not, that would be beneath him-- but his eyes definitely widen (With what? Fear? Shock?) but it lasts just a moment before he clamps back down on rabid anger.  
  
Fletcher grabs his wrist (his hand could wrap around it almost twice over) and holds his emaciated arm in front of his face. "What the _fuck_ , Neiman?"   
  
"You saw, can I _go_ now?" He asks, bitterly, yanking his hand away.  
  
"Not until you tell me what this is about," Fletcher looks almost at a loss. "It's not drugs, is it." It's not a question.  
  
"I spontaneously contracted cancer, okay?"  
  
"You're not gonna tell me? So you just don't give a shit?" Neiman flinches at this phrase, which Fletcher had used in that first rehearsal.   
  
"Listen, you're the one who told me- let me see if I remember- to 'get my fat ass out of your office'." It sounds petty and ridiculous, which he knows as soon as he says it.   
  
The truth hits Fletcher full force. He blinks. Once, twice. Then the bastard actually laughs. "So you went full-on Karen Carpenter because I hurt your  _feelings_?"   
  
"It's not that big of a deal, don't flatter yourself," Neiman says, feeling paralyzed under his conductor's gaze.   
Fletcher lifts an eyebrow. "You look like someone stretched a condom over a skeleton."

  
Andrew, despite a perverse swell of pride at this twisted kind of praise, resents like hell being treated like a picture from his tenth grade health class-- some sad blonde girl, pinching the fat on her hip in the mirror, totally helpless. He ignores the head rush as he bends down to pick up his t-shirt  
  
Fletcher looks at his watch. "Well. I guess I have to take you to the fucking hospital now."  
  
"Don't."  
  
"I can't have you die on my watch, Neiman."  
  
"If my dad found out-- I...I'll figure it out, not a fucking _hospital_ -" Andrew's vision goes starry again, his heart pumping hard and fast.    
  
Fletcher gives him a cold, penetrating glance for a long moment. He pulls out his cell phone and calls a cab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another short one- why am i like this


	4. Neiman Plays House with his Sadistic Ex-Professor

Fletcher's apartment is immaculate and bare, but everything is just expensive enough to make it look purposeful rather than pathetic. The only personal touches are two bookshelves: one full of books (of which, imagine Neimans surprise, there are at least a handful that _aren't_  about music theory) and the other full of records.   
  
"You eat when I tell you, you play when I tell you. You speak when spoken to, you sleep on the couch, and you leave the second you can."  
  
Neiman nods, wordless.   
  
"I'm serious. I don't need to get fired because it looks like I'm keeping some wrists-limper-than-his-dick former student in my house as a live-in boy toy."  
  
Neiman sits on the leather couch awkwardly as the couch's owner searches through his linen closet for sheets.   
  
The next morning he wakes up and Fletcher is sitting at the kitchen table, staring wordlessly at Andrew. He rises, groggy and sore, and sits at the table with his former teacher.   
  
Fletcher wordlessly places a plastic bottle in front of him.  
  
"Uh, good morning,"   
  
"Drink your Ensure, Neiman. I gotta get to a meeting at noon."  
  
Neiman checks the label. 360 calories a serving.

Neiman tries to remember the last time he ate 360 calories all at once. He comes up empty. He tries to lift it to his lips, but just the thought makes him feel heavy and gross and dirty, like the drink might turn to cement inside him. 

"If you're not going to drink it voluntarily, I looked up how to get a court order to get you fed through a tube. Your pick, Neiman."  
  
Somehow that was the most _Fletcher_ thing Neiman had ever heard: forcing his way inside him and filling him with whatever he thought was best. "Since when have you given a shit about my safety?" He's standing now, head rush and blurred vision.  
  
"You don't get to die before I want you to. You don't get off that easy." He says, eyes cold and venomous.  
  
"Fuck you. I'm not your fucking property and you don't get to run my life-" His head reels with a sudden slap.  
  
"I personally can't see a way that having a tube in your throat would prevent you from drumming, so please, keep being a petulant fucking child if that's what you want." He says calmly, and sits back down.  
  
Neiman drinks the Ensure. Neiman hates himself for it. "Good boy." Fletcher sneers. Then he takes off-- just throws his jacket over his shoulder and leaves without another word.   
  
After he's gone, Neiman finds himself in Fletcher's bed. He's not sure how long he's been there, as he's recently acquired a habit of losing whole stretches of time, like a blackout without the alcohol. Still, he cherishes the warmth-- Fletcher's apartment just might be the coldest place in the universe.  He'd somehow brought half the blankets in this infuriatingly tidy apartment with him. He was wrapped in layer upon layer of the smell of Fletcher's skin. The scent of Fletcher's preferred brands of shaving cream and fabric softener were worming their way into him. And he sleeps.   
  
He wakes up to Fletcher sitting at the foot of the bed, staring at him in silence.  
  
"Are you going to say something or are you just saving this image for jerk-off material?"

"Neiman, to want to fuck you, I would have to be a necrophile."

"Fuck off."

This sets Fletcher off. "It wasn't enough to fuck over my band my passing out on my floor? Now you've somehow found your way into my _house_ and you still think your useless pansy ass has the right to talk to me like that?" He backhands Neiman, his knuckle catching on the drummer's lip. 

A trickle of blood. Fletcher stares as though he had never made anyone bleed before, as if the rope around Sean Casey's neck didn't feel like his fingers--

Neiman presses the pads of his calloused fingers to the injury. Then he stands and presses his red-stained hand to Fletchers lips. A kiss in four dimensions. Fletcher surprises him by holding his wrist in place. His teeth tease the ridges of his fingerprints, then he pushes Neiman's arm aside. "You're a sick fuck, Neiman," he laughs.

" _I'm_ sick? Says the only conductor in history to have a body count. You killed Sean Casey, and you might as well have killed me."

"If you want to die, go right ahead. But do me a favor and leave me out of your little melodrama,"  
  
"Bullshit. If I killed myself, who would put you on the map? No one would remember your fucking name,"  
  
"You think I need you? You think the world stops turning without the Great Andrew Neiman? You can't even kill yourself right."  
  
He bites his lip to hold back a sob or an ill-advised punch or both.   
  
"God, no wonder Mommy left you. You're pathetic, Neiman. You make your father look like the fucking pinnacle of bravery."  
  
He had always known somehow that his mother left because of him. Not because of his father, who was content to dissolve into obscurity, and not because she didn't want a family (when Neiman's father got drunk enough, he would talk about how _happy_ she was when they were first married, when she got pregnant.) It was because of him. Because she'd held him in her arms and she'd known that he was poison. That he was made to break into a million pieces, and it was better to leave before she got his shrapnel embedded in her skin. 

"If I'm so fucking worthless, why don't you just let me die? Why couldn't you let me die!" Neiman launches himself at Fletcher, all bones and balled-up fists. Fletcher catches and restrains him like he's not even there.

He looks the other man in the eye. "You don't get it, do you? You can't just decide that life is too hard and pussy out. You don't get to run away from who you are or who you could become. You can't decide that it's easier to be nothing. You just don't get to."

Neiman stops struggling.


	5. It Gets Better Before It Gets Worse, or: It All Goes to Hell Part Two

Things are different after that. Fletcher had all but admitted that he saw _something_ in him, something that meant he deserved to live, something ready to _become_. So Neiman eats (sometimes), but mostly just because that's what Fletcher wants. He pukes more often then not after Fletcher leaves for functions and meetings and drinks with old bandmates. He finds himself hanging in no-man's land, the strange liminal reality of living somewhere that's not home, of eating more than he wanted to but less than he should, of wanting to die but deciding not to. 

Alongside the glowing pride of having Flecther's attention for more than just a few minutes of slapping him around every day, a new resentment grows in his chest: he wishes Fletcher would force him to get better (because how could he let him do this?) or just leave him alone (because what right does he have to control Neiman's life?) He lies awake at night, his mind screaming at himself, at Fletcher, at the world. It occurs to him that in accepting his help, he's handed Fletcher a map of his weak spots-- his ex-teacher was never supposed to know how his words had long since taken up residence in Neiman's skull. 

Once he is steady enough to play, he plays; and once he's steady enough to go to practice (and Fletcher takes to calling him "Auschwitz" in front of the whole band, obviously pleased with himself for coming up with it), he goes; but Fletcher never tells him to leave the apartment.

In an odd way, it is business as usual. 

Fletcher gets more posessive in small ways, seemingly having realized that he'd almost lost his precious Charlie Parker. He's still an evil, subhuman monster, to be sure. But he makes sure Neiman ices his hands after rehearsals. He stops him from buying pills. At some point Fletcher had realized that he'd created something transcendent with this obnoxious, bony kid, and now he was stuck with him. He starts using the word "potential" a lot (even if he called Neiman a worthless sack of shit with cocksucker lips in the same breath). The world narrowed around them, until the only thing that was real was the two of them and this incredible _something_ they'd built.

It's raining and Fletcher is hailing a cab for them after rehearsal (old motherfucker refused to use Uber) when he turns to Neiman. "Why did you do it?"

"What do you mean?" Neiman asks, uneasy.

"I may be a lot of things, Neiman, but I'm not an egomaniac. I don't think some throwaway comment after practice was enough to turn you into fucking Calista Flockhart-"

"Who?"

Fletcher rolls his eyes. "I'm saying, I was aware that you're a fucking retard, I'm just asking exactly what possessed you to _stop eating_." He asks, almost not unkindly.

"I..I don't know. I guess you just brought something to the surface that had always been there."

"Neiman, I'm going to tell you something you probably should have figured out already. You're not a good person. You're not nice, or interesting or likable. Your mother didn't want you and your father's a fucking loser. Nobody likes you, and they're not wrong to feel that way. But you have to ask yourself: why the fuck do you care? When we get to my apartment, you're going to practice, right? _That_ matters. Nothing else." A cab pulls up. "Get in, Neiman. Stop standing there with your mouth open, you look like a fucking fish."

This, Neiman assumes, is how Fletcher expresses emotions. The thing about Fletcher is, Neiman could never convince himself that he was completely evil. Sadistic, sure. His violence and wrath were often petty and sometimes random, yes. But not evil. Not completely. Neiman remembers seeing Fletcher talk to thsi little girl, the daughter of some old colleague, all the way back at the concert where he'd lost Tanner's folder. HE remembers smiling to himself. Fletcher couldn't be _all_ bad. So Neiman grows to be almost comfortable around him in the coming weeks. The two of them practice nonstop, and the rapport between them is simultaneously vicious and familiar. Fletcher talks about finding another drummer for him to do a duet with: an arrangement of "The Monster" where Neiman would play Buddy Rich's part.

Neiman thinks this might actually be what happiness feels like, ir at least what passes for happiness when you're an obsessed, neurotic artist who will probably never like himself.

It's throwing up that gets him in trouble. He's still losing weight, if slowly, and he collects a delightful array of side effects. His hearing goes out at random, his throat bleeds where his fingernails leave tears, and his heart skips beats, leaving his chest feeling hollow and aching.

But Fletcher seemingly doesn't notice any of this, so Neiman is pretty sure he's kept it well hidden.

Fletcher had just left for the night, and Neiman immediately leaves for the bathroom. He closes the door and shoves three fingers down his throat. The only good thing about Fletcher making him drink meal replacements that taste like hospital floors is that they come back up super easily. Neiman stops when he tastes bile, washes his hands and rinses his mouth out. He turns to dry his hands and there's Fletcher, leaning in the doorway.

How much had he seen? Neiman's thoughts start racing. He doesn't have time to make excuses or beg forgiveness, or ask why Fletcher hadn't left. Fletcher slaps him across the face, grabs him by the hair and throws him to the ground. Neiman pulls himself back up to his knees, but Fletcher grabs him by the wrists (both if them fit comfortably in one of his hands) and drags him across the apartment. He throws the door open and throws Neiman out so forcefully he lands face-down in the hallway with nothing to break his fall.


	6. Andrew Neiman, Professional Broken Machine

There's _no_ way he's going to debase himself by banging on the door and begging to be let back in, despite the fact that everything in his body screams at him to do just that. Fletcher's apartment is a good two miles from his (and that's not even counting crosstown blocks) and he has no money for a cab. No phone, no wallet, he's not even wearing _shoes_.

But he grits his teeth, crosses his arms over his chest, and walks the forty-odd blocks home. The bones in his feet hurt like hell. _God, this is pathetic._ He falls into bed as soon as he gets inside, shivering uncontrollably. He has no idea whether he's supposed to come to practice the next day, and no idea what to do with his time if he's not. So he lets himself fall apart. He sleeps for thirteen hours a day and waits for Fletcher to call, to mail his shoes to him, to send him a telegram- _something_. He goes days like this, not even drinking water. Everything hurts, everything is bruised and mottled and sore. He has a splitting headache that never relents and occasional spasms of pain wrack his body. This, he realizes, is the feeling of his muscles and organs consuming themselves. He's decomposing like he's already dead.

After Neiman had given up on thinking about Fletcher, had given up on thinking at all, a knock comes at the door. Neiman considers throwing a pillow over his head to drown out the noise, but he's vaguely curious as to who it could be. Who was aware enough of his existence to come over? It couldn't be his father, who would have called the landline first and was used to not seeing his son for weeks besides. So he trudges to the door, opens it. It's Fletcher. "You little shit, do you have any idea how embarassing it is to be seen walking into your shithole of an apartment?" He jerks his head in the direction of the elevator "Come on, motherfucker, the meter's running."

Neiman puts on his sneakers and follows him outside. "98th and Madison," he tells the driver.

"How did you find me?"

"You're not exactly Alan Turing, Neiman. Your phone's password is your birthday."

_Fletcher knows my birthday._

 "Oh, and don't think that just because I came and found you in that fucking hovel of an apartment, you're back in core. You have to earn your spot, I don't give a shit how close you came to killing yourself trying to deal with your mommy issues." They ride in silence. 98th and Madison. Home to Mount Sinai Medical Center.

"I thought we agreed on no hospitals," Neiman asks numbly.

" _You_ said no hospitals."

"You're not my fucking guardian, this can't be legal."

"You think any judge wouldn't grant me a court order? You think I wouldn't call _daddy_ if they didn't? Neiman, you're going in there or you're finished drumming. Not just in my band. Anywhere. Who would hire _you_? Your greatest hits are jerking off, passing out in the shower, and piblically beating the shit out of your conductor. I've invested way too much in this for you to die on me. Up and at 'em, asshole."

Neiman gets a physical. The day Fletcher called him a fatass, almost a year ago now, he weighed 183 lbs and stood 6' tall. He now weighs 105 lbs. He's dehydrated, his sodium levels are nonexistent, he's deficient in everything a human being can be deficient in. He has osteopenia, which the doctor says he's never seen in someone who wasn't a sixty year-old woman. His heartbeat is arrhythmic and about 10 beats a minute below the minimum healthy rate (When the doctor leaves, Fletcher says "Shit, I knew you couldn't keep tempo, but this is ridiculous." and Neiman doesn't know if he wants to kill him or burst out laughing.) He has stomach acid in his sinuses and corroding his teeth. He has tears in his esophagus and the beginnings of necrosis in his digestive system. The doctor tells him that he could die in the next few weeks, probably of heart failure, or maybe of a brain hemorrhage if he's really lucky.

After a short series of questions, Neiman is officially diagnosed: he can add "certified anorexic" to his resume. The doctor's recommendation is that Andrew be immediately hospitalized.

Neiman doesn't like being alive, but he's not good enough to die-- not yet. He can't die like this: nothing and no one, desperately clinging on to something that might save him.


	7. the tradeoff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw:suicide
> 
> hey everyone, im back! i tried to kill myself in december and im really just getting back into writing. sorry for the long ass wait, hope you enjoy this chapter

Four days later, it is a Monday morning and Neiman is on his way to rehearsal for a concert, so all is well. He has a prescription for Prozac and one for Thorazine, and the _pièce de résistance_ , a plastic tube surgically implanted in his stomach, hidden safely beneath a sweatshirt. As far as everyone in the ensemble knows, Neiman was on a bender or just indulging in a little lover's spat with Fletcher. He spent 72 hours held in the hospital under court order, mostly just sleeping with an IV in his arm. He asks a nurse for two pens that he can use as facsimiles of his sticks, which he is denied, lest he try to off himself with a ballpoint. Instead, he uses two non-toxic, felt tipped markers to tap out polyrhythms against the broad, grotesquely jutting bones of his leg. He looks slightly less like hell when he returns (his dark circles gone, hydrated enough to look less like a deflated balloon) but there was no mistaking it: he had the unmistakable look of a person more than a little familiar with his own mortality.

Fletcher stops eyeing him like he might spontaneously self-destruct at any moment. The threat of impending hospitalization or impending fuckup-ness disappears from over their respective heads. The word "trust" comes to mind, although it doesn't fit quite right in Neiman's mouth. 

Then one day, after he's a bit more stable and a bit less terrified that Fletchers wrath is hiding around every corner, Andrew hustles into rehearsal, bleary eyed and a few seconds after Fletcher (which is, to be perfectly fair, still early). Fletcher is silent, lets him sit down and take out his sticks. He holds his breath, waiting to be berated or ordered to play some ridiculous chart unaccompanied.

The silence is unbearable.

"I'm sorry I'm late." He mutters.

"No, no, I'm glad you got your beauty sleep Neiman." He says, smiling, voice faux-pleasant, malice well disguised behind his eyes. 

"In fact, you look incredibly refreshed." He turns to the rest of the band. "Doesn't Neiman look really _healthy_ , guys?" Nervous laughter.

"Neiman, have you put on some weight lately?" The smile slips from false politeness into razor-blade cruelty.

Neiman tightens his grip ever so slightly on his sticks. Completely blank-faced.

"Neiman, I asked you a question."

He'd rather spit out glass, would rather lose his shredded tongue in a spray of blood and bleed out right there than answer that question.

"I'm not sure." Terse.

Fletcher gives him that Look, the one that says "I won", that says "How did you ever _hope_ for escape?" And just like that, he's lost all his power.

Thats the fucked up, paradoxical, delicious heart of it all: the only way for him to get the upper hand is to stand perpetually on the edge of death, one foot off the ledge. He had to become utterly powerless to get real power.

Back at home, blood spatters the porcelain and he grins a gory smile.


	8. turn the other cheek

Neiman doesn't eat for four days after that and he doesn't know if he's doing it to spite Fletcher or to please him.

 

The thing about being Fletcher's wind-up toy/protege/punching bag is that you learn how to turn the other cheek. Not in grace, or in discipline, but in _eagerness_ , in certainty that pain will _fix_ you, refine you, turn all your vulnerabilities into calluses and melt away all the superfluous feelings that get in the way of greatness.

 

So Neiman shows up to rehearsal the next day. Neiman _shows up,_ Neiman comes back for more, tries harder, is better, is the best. Neiman keeps kicking at the damn football.

 

And Fletcher is happy with Neiman's playing, and only occasionally refers to him as "skeletor".

 

It is before his 21st birthday and Neiman weighs 122lbs, and Neiman is absolutely hammered, because Fletcher ordered them round after round and he'll be damned if this old man outdrinks him in this ancient jazz bar where all the bartenders know him as "Terrence". Fuck, he'll be damned if someone named _Terrence_ could outdrink him in the first place. The original cause for celebration was Neiman being approached by a scout from Lincoln Center, but the drinking soon eclipsed the reason and Fletcher is almost warm when he's drunk, in a gruff and nostalgic way, and before morning they've toasted to everything from the existence of JVC to the janitor who cleans their practice room and Neiman doesn't want this night to end.

 

The sun is rising and Neiman has stumbled his way to Terrence Fletcher's apartment. The memory of his first night there makes him shiver; he can hear his bones click. And Fletcher is drunk, his tongue thick and slow and his limbs heavy in a way that makes Neiman feel stronger than him for once. Neiman assumes Fletcher will want to sleep, and like some housewife, he takes his shoes and jacket off for him, and before he can walk away and out the door, Fletcher's hand catches his wrist.

 

Next thing Neiman knows his mouth is on Fletcher's cock, and Fletchers hand comes quickly to his head, knots his fingers in his hair. Neiman takes Fletcher's hand and slowly, deliberately, removes it from his head. This would go at _his_ tempo.

 

When Neiman comes to, with a horrible headache and the feeling there is probably cum to be rinsed out of his hair, he is curled into Fletcher's side like a newborn baby. They are not touching, but their spines describe identical curves.

 

Neiman tries to carefully extricate himself from the situation without waking Fletcher, who looks nearly innocent in sleep and silence. He's putting on his shoes, trying his best to stave off the oncoming flood of fuckfuckfuckwhathaveidone when Fletcher sits up, eyes already keen and clear, like he hadn't drunk half of Russia last night.

 

"You can see yourself out. Practice, 5 o'clock, and take a shower, you drunk shitsack."

**Author's Note:**

> god i love this insufferable self-loathing drumboi


End file.
